Nokia 770 Internet Tablet 0.0625 GB

OVERVIEW
‘Internet tablet’ isn’t really doing this device justice. Whilst accessing the internet is one of its most impressive feature points, it also has a wealth of other utilities that I will come to mention later in this review. At an RRP of £140, this device has both negative and positive aspects but overall comes out on top – for now.

SPECS
I’ll just briefly give a few specs as I know you can find them elsewhere – but it’s nice to have everything in one place sometimes, isn’t it?

-The display is 16-bit colour, and 800x460 resolution.
-There is 64MB of available memory.
-The CPU runs at 250MHz.
-Finally, the tablet measures at 5.5x3.1x0.7inches.

This makes a nice, bright screen and the size is not too big to hold.

CONNECTING TO THE INTERNET
Connection is done through Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. When you first try to connect a box will pop up with the connections within a certain radius – including your neighbours – and whether they are open or not. I don’t suggest connecting to connect to someone else’s unless you have their permission – it’s illegal. Once connected, the tablet is like any other computer/laptop, except much smaller. You can visit any site you wish – I even visited Ciao!

One thing I would advise is not to do things like Internet Banking over a Wi-Fi connection. Whilst most are very safe, you never know who is logging on to the same, and finding out what your details.

Wi-Fi connections are everywhere these days; in train stations, pubs and even some shops. This makes it easy to connect when you’re out and about.

Browsing on the Nokia is easy – I only experienced freezing once when I tried to open an internet radio website – otherwise I have had no other freezing.

COMMUNICATION
You need to first of all create a user account to be able to communicate with the tablet. You can then use IM services like Jabber and Google Talk (the defaults) to chat over the net. You can also do Internet calls (as long as you already have an internet phone account), and set up an Outlook Express-style inbox to read your emails.

UTILITIES/GAMES
Games included are Mah-jong, ‘Marbles’ and Chess. All are easy to control, and I’ve spent many a minute playing on these games to pass some time.

It also has all the basic utilities that most phones have – a simple calculator, a clock, and a little notepad. There is also a sketch pad and a PDF reader. These are very nifty – you can even save images you draw on the sketch pad and send them through email!

MEDIA
The tablet also has the ability to play audio and video that is stored on the device, or to watch audio/video streams through the internet.

CONTROLS
The one thing that gets me with this device is the controls – whilst I find using the stylus (2 are supplied) easy (I have a Nintendo DS =]) the keyboard is tiny – you can make it full screen and although this makes text input slightly faster it’s only really easy if you have skinny, skinny fingers. Potentially the fastest text input is through handwriting recognition, but it’s probably actually the slowest – you can train the device to recognise your handwriting or rely on the preset characters. When you set the input to handwriting in any text input screen you get a tiny bar to write in. If, like me, you write cursively then you’re stuck as it only recognises separate characters, and even then it gets confused between o and 0 and 1 and I. My attempt to write ‘Hello, my name is Lucy’ with no training of the handwriting came up as: ‘he llO,mymameiS Luy’. Maybe it would improve with training but I can’t stand writing in block characters so it’s not for me.

There are also some buttons – on/off, a d-pad, a ‘home’ button, a ‘back’ button, volume controls and a ‘menu’ button – all of which are easy to access and control.

PROBLEMS
We only got this device about a week ago, and it’s had problems since we’ve had it, and these problems are supposedly very common. At first the device would not turn on unless it was charging, even though it was fully charged. When we disconnected it it would work for a while but then when we tried to turn it on and back off again it wouldn’t work. Supposedly the best fix for it is to leave the device on and let it discharge completely, only turning it off at night which is what we are doing at present, and it works absolutely fine. However some people are reporting problems saying they have to ‘jump-start’ the device with the charger to get it to start up.

CHARGING
The charger supplied is a little odd, with two square prongs – but it fits into a shaver socket. Charging time is variable – see above.

MY OPINION
Whilst an excellent device in my opinion (although this is my first experience of an internet tablet), it still has some teething problems. We got ours for a much reduced price of £60, but I imagine getting it for the RRP of £140 and then discovering it to not work would be frustrating. Personally, I would wait a few months for the problems to iron themselves out a little and for the price to come down slightly before you make the purchase.